Sailing Tarka: Another day at the office

3:00 AM: The alarm clock is going off which leads to a great deal of confusion. “That can't be right,” I thought to myself, “I feel like I just fell asleep.” I look over at the clock to check the time. I look at my watch and confirm the bad news. Time to get up. The truck is loaded and ready to go. Our gear is organized and we had even packed our lunch. Today we will climb Epinephrine.

3:30 AM: We leave Juliet's aunt's house right on schedule. It is pitch black in every direction except towards the Las Vegas strip. Is the sun rising already or is it just the light pollution? We head up Hwy 160 and continue to flank the rolling hills that contrast the desert floor. Five more miles down a BLM managed dirt road will take us into the heart of the precipitous Red Rocks and to the entrance of Black Velvet Canyon.

4:30 AM: The rest of our approach is now by foot. We are working under headlamps and take only the two backpacks that will be with us for the 2,000’ journey. We spend the next hour scrambling through an old river bed turned boulder field that splits the middle of the canyon. We had practiced this approach the day before as we wanted to be as efficient as possible.

5:30 AM: We have a head start on the sun but already know we will be racing it down at the end of the day. We are now at the base of our climb. I begin climbing by head lamp, knowing that we only have 10 hours of daylight before we will be cast back into darkness. Juliet leads the next pitch as the sun finally finds us. We studied our map of the climb one last time before plunging into its infamous chimney section.

9:30AM: I had climbed deeper into the chimney than I would have liked, but it was the only way to protect the pitch. It was wider further out and would have been easier climbing with the trade off of being more exposed.

I had used chimney technique (back against one wall, feet against the other, push with feet and scoot back up wall 1mm, move feet up, curse, repeat), until it became so narrow that my legs couldn't get into the right position. A five inch off-width crack began to run up the route for the remainder of the climb.

I remember Tamas showing me the butterfly technique in Indian Creek (cross your arms and put the back of your hands together, push your fingers out and away from each other so that they push against each side of the wide crack). Using this hand technique, I would pull my body up as high as I could before thrusting my left leg, thigh deep into the crack. With leg wedged, I could reach up with both hands and repeat the process. I finally caught a glimpse of the chains marking a small belay ledge and the end of the pitch and hurried my way up. Physically exhausted, I tried to catch my breath and calm my stomach.

10:30 AM: Juliet led us out of the first half of the chimney system. The pitch was short and sweet. I climbed up behind her. We pulled out the map again. A bolt on the previous pitch had been mislabeled. We had actually managed to combine two of the chimney pitches and were now looking at the last sixty feet before we were on top of the Black Tower.

The pitch had two bolts which I hyper-focused on as I climbed, already exhausted. To my relief, the walls of the chimney were studded and pocked with formation, making the climbing much easier than the varnished walls of previous pitches. I took my time but moved confidently while in limbo between the first and second bolt.

Once the second bolt was clipped, I couldn't seem to climb fast enough to get to the summit of the Black Tower. All we had to do was haul the bags up once more and the chimney sections would be behind us.

11:30 AM: We had finally reached the top of the Black Tower. We watched some climbers make their way up a neighboring route on the Black Velvet Wall and we felt a little less alone. With six pitches of face climbing left, we were eager to continue.

Juliet led us off of the Black Tower and up the exposed face of the Black Velvet Wall. We swapped leads for the next 800 feet and were happy to see that the route was straight-forward and easy to follow.

4:00 PM: We had spent the day watching the shadows of Black Velvet Peak get closer and closer to the distant Las Vegas Strip. The sun was setting fast. I belayed Juliet up the “last” pitch. The summit of this colossus rock formation still loomed hundreds of feet overhead. Without delay, we scrambled around the rock formation, carefully following an exposed ramp that proved much more technical than we were hoping.

We finally spotted the huge and lonely Ponderosa Pine that marked the top of the route. A very thin goat trail wound its way up the final few hundred feet. Twilight was upon us and we were in a hurry, but we decided to rope up for the small, thin and very exposed approach to the goat trail.

5:00 PM We gained the summit just as darkness fell on the twinkling city far below. Still before us was the ominous descent. Hiking by headlamp, we followed cairns across two intersecting ridges. We were aware that getting lost or descending off of the ridge too early would be dangerous so we moved slowly and cautiously.

Nearly an hour into our descent we lost the cairn trail. We spent the next 90 minutes tracing and retracing our steps, looking for the next cairn to lead us in the right direction, but there was none. Tired and exhausted, our patience was greatly tested and we talked about the possibility of spending the night on the ridge so as to be able to find our way down in the day light.

We agreed to scramble to a distant peak to try and get our bearings. As we approached the peak we realized that the actual “peak” was a ten foot tall cairn. We briefly rejoiced and hurried on along the ridge. We quickly gained the final peak which marked our descent. Another hour of knee-pounding downhill took us to the top of the Whiskey Peak Gully. We knew our way from here as we had climbed Frogland the week prior which exits the same gully.

9:00 PM: We finally made it back to the car and in good spirits. As soon as we sat down our endorphins expired and every ache and pain became acutely accentuated. We did very little for the next several days but had a lasting feeling of accomplishment that we had done something epic.